The interconnectivity of individuals and organisations has increased exponentially in recent times with advent of various telecommunication means, including the Internet.
The Internet has connected the world with literally billions of connected nodes (or users) representing entities of various types,—people, organisations, computers, and other devices. Many solutions such as the world wide web, online bulletin boards, email, online instant messaging, and peer-to-peer solutions allow direct contact between any number of these nodes. The very success of this inter-node connectivity/accessibility has however lead to further problems where a node/entity would prefer to control its ‘visibility’ and accessibility to a subset of the potential world-wide internet community, for any number of reasons, e.g. discretion, trust, association, preference, improving the quality and relevance of information and so forth.
Existing means of addressing this problem include specific implementation web-sites configurations. These typically require secure access using authentication, with an associated increase in costs, maintenance, administration and lack of flexibility. Specific emails and/or direct telephone contact is often employed, though these require time and effort to implement.
Virtual Private Networks, or Intranets provide companies with secure networks on which only their employees and/or clients and partners can utilise, though again, at a high cost.
There is therefore a need for a system where nodes/entities can still interact with a wide range of implementations and other nodes/entities via any appropriate communication methods, whilst providing control over the distribution of information flow between the nodes and also the degree of ‘visibility’ of the node/entity, i.e. the degree to which information flow and/or the interconnection between nodes in a user's unique private personal network is discernable to other nodes.
Incentives to restrict the distribution and flow of information within a network include obtaining some form of filtering of irrelevant, useless, unwanted, offensive, intrusive or in any way undesirable information or interaction with other nodes/entities. Humans consciously and subconsciously already utilise such filtering in their daily life by placing greater weighting on information from friends and acquaintances than from unfamiliar sources.
Throughout virtually every aspect of human life, economic, social, personal and business decisions are either directly or indirectly affected by the preferences, tastes and actions of our friends, colleagues and acquaintances. This is in contrast to widely accepted economic theory in the fields of, for example, consumer purchases where it is assumed individuals make rational choices based upon the available product or service information. In actual fact, a recommendation, or an adverse comment from a close trusted acquaintance regarding a specific product will often override other factors in a commercial purchase decision, rightly or not. There are many other areas in which the opinions of respected acquaintances or even organisations can affect the decision making of individuals or organisations.
Examples of just a few embodiments or activities in which trusted or respected contacts or recommendations play a significant role include seeking employment and filling job vacancies, investment opportunities, academic co-operation, finding accommodation or people to share accommodation with, buying and selling goods and services, arranging social/sporting functions, finding friendship, romantic and/or social relationships and so forth.
There are thus numerous possible embodiments that could benefit from a discriminating means of forming a network of contacts with entities of known value to the user.
Considering the example of employment, the task of finding a suitable employee amongst a potentially huge number of applicants obtained through public advertising can be a significant deterrent to many employers. Consequently, many vacancies are only advertised internally or simply filled by recommendations from existing employees. However, such a system is, by its very nature, haphazard and dependant on a non-systematic information distribution system. Conversely, an ideal candidate seeking employment who wants to be aware of a suitable vacancy known to one of his friends would have to systematically inquire with his friends on a regular basis. In practice, this type of behaviour would alienate many friends and thus is not typical. In addition, the candidate would not be aware of vacancies know to friends of his friends unless he could convince his friends to systematically enquire with their friends, which they are unlikely to do.
Nevertheless, employers are still confronted by numerous deficiencies in the existing alternatives to finding an employee. As discussed above, advertising via traditional media outlets such as the newspapers, magazines and so forth can produce an excessive number of applicants. The filtering required to shortlist candidates for interview may be based on misleading impressions formed from Curriculum Vitas, formal qualifications, age, experience and so forth. Furthermore, the cost of the advertising itself together with the processing cost of all the low quality enquires can be a significant burden.
Recruitment agencies may be employed to locate and pre-filter potential candidates for higher calibre applicants, though this places a further overhead on the employment process.
Internet employment advertising on online job-boards with open access for all potential candidates can expose the vacancy to a large number of potential candidates. However, this can also lead to numerous inappropriate responses from a variety of sources. Furthermore, the aforementioned disadvantages of newspaper magazine advertising are also present with this method.
There is thus a need to harness the discriminatory powers of the knowledge, opinions and recommendations of an individual's extended social network in an efficient and systematic manner without irritating or alienating members of the network.
As a further example, the process of finding a personal friend or romantic partner is strongly affected by social connections. The desire to establish fulfilling relationships with other humans, whether romantic or otherwise is one of the strongest human drives and can be the cause of a great deal of anxiety, stress and uncertainty. The very process of establishing relationships with other humans is often fraught with difficulties, compounded by the inherent characteristics of most humans to avoid risk and/or potential rejection.
Many relationships and marriages have traditionally been arranged by families and/or stem from relationships established during school, work, or other situations where humans experience a common bond. Traditional demographics and cultural characteristics which historically have provided structures and opportunities for like minded individuals to meet are increasingly being replaced or are considered undesirable and/or unacceptable to a large portion of society.
The increasing urbanisation of populations has resulted with people having lifestyles and schedules which preclude them from establishing successful relationships. Consequently, many people have turned to less traditional means of finding potential mates and a variety of dating services have been provided to meet such needs.
However, many of the factors which inhibit or pose difficulties for individuals to establish relationships with strangers are equally applicable to many such dating services. Even when two people would both like to initiate the first steps in a relationship, shyness, fear of rejection, or other social pressures or constraints often prevent the parties from establishing contact.
To overcome such difficulties, systems exist whereby people view video tapes/pictures of prospective partners and/or assess common areas of interest such as hobbies, employment and so forth to determine their interest in the potential partner.
The introduction of both parties is only effected if both parties are willing to do so.
Unfortunately, for many people, the visual appearance and/or the stated personal interests are often not sufficient in themselves to overcome the feeling of unease or trepidation of a user from meeting such a potential stranger on a ‘blind date’. The initial step itself actually approaching a dating service can prove too embarrassing for many people thus precluding them from being assessed by potentially suitable partners who do make use of the dating service.
Alternative means of matching potential partners include the use of personal advertisements placed in magazines, newspapers and so forth. In recent times, this has been extended to include use of the internet as a means of increasing the potential pool of suitable partners. In such advertisements, people provide a brief description of their own personality traits and interests and express their preference of such traits in potential respondents. However, such descriptions are often misleading or even untruthful and due to the lack of any independent means of verification available to the enquirer, such advertisements are often treated with a great deal of scepticism by potential users.
Various attempts have been made to enhance such dating services by computerising the recordal and organisation of various human characteristics, seeking to provide enquirers with candidates matching their desired lists of characteristics. None of the systems however overcome the fundamental reluctance of most people to initiate a relationship with a completely unknown individual.
People often become acquainted with their partner due to their environment, i.e. school, college work and so forth and/or due to contact through mutual friends. The most prevalent factor leading to the majority of human relationships is the existence of such a common bond, link or situation/circumstance, either directly or indirectly with the eventual partner.
The very act of establishing friendship with a particular person confers at least a partial affirmation of the person's character, judgement and personality without which the friendship would not have been established in the first place. By proxy therefore, it is widely felt that friends of a friend are also likely to meet the same criteria or standards which formed the basis for the established friendship. The common factor of having a mutual friend provides both potential partners with a degree of reassurance of potential compatibility and like-mindedness which is not discernible through known dating services.
Despite the advantages of seeking potential relationships with friends and friends of friends, it is generally impossible for people to attend all the social functions required to meet all the potentially suitable partners in such an extended network of friends. Furthermore, whilst many friends might be willing or keen to help match potentially suitable partners, they may not want to become duly involved themselves.
Although the act of seeking a romantic relationship may involve contact with an individual's extended network of friends, many non-romantic activities and/or decisions are also influenced by the individual's extended social network.
Contemporary living has confronted many individuals with a daily surplus of information. This bewildering array of choices and decisions vies for the individual's attention in almost every aspect of their work, recreation, and social lives. The vast majority of information sources received by most individuals is biased to some extent by commercial interests. Consequently, there is at least the perception the information may be incomplete, misleading or false. The lack of independent objectivity from these information sources leads to scepticism and/or a sense of futility, helplessness, or ambivalence in obtaining worthwhile advice. In contrast, a recommendation by trusted friend of a particular product, service or the like, is likely to be given far greater weighting. Such recommendations will often be accorded far greater significance than any number of expensive, professionally produced, and theoretically compelling advertisements/product recommendations.
An individual may seek a friend's opinion on a variety of issues, aside from commercial purchase issues. The choice of plumbers, dentists, lawyers and other suppliers for example, may be strongly influenced by personal recommendation. Whilst such specific choices may only arise infrequently, friends and acquaintances are often in frequent contact and may cover a wide range of matters, including opinions/recommendations on issues such as books, films, entertainment, restaurants, and many others.
Potential implementations which may benefit from such a system are potentially limitless and the above are given solely by way of example.
Various prior art methods have addressed these issues including:    U.S. Pat. No. 6,269,369 Robertson which teaches a means of implementing a computer-based personal contact manager that allows members to create and maintain contacts with other members and in doing so incorporate their contact details on their personalised address books. As further members join the group, their contact details are optionally incorporated in the address books of the existing members. Furthermore, any changes in the contact details of the members are automatically updated in the address books of the other members. However, the system is primarily directed to maintaining connectivity between individuals by updating their contacts details, rather than sharing information between members of a unique private personal network.    US 2002/0091538 Schwartz et al teaches a means of fundraising via a network of friends. However, the system is tiered in a pyramid structure, preventing meaningful any two-way exchange of information between members of the network. Each member seeks to raise funds from their other friends in a cascading fashion.    US 2002/0049816 Costin, IV et at also addresses the issue of fundraising, but does not provide a unique personal, private network through which its members may exchange information and interact.    WO 01/63423 Ikimbo, Inc teaches an “information and application distribution system (IADS)” allowing interaction and communication within defined communities. The system requires the installation of a client-side executable application for each member of the community. The community is an organised network rather than a personalised one and is not private.    WO 02/15050 Luth Research Inc teaches a method of conducting surveys and collecting information. The invention invites people to become part of a network of people wishing to answer surveys and is not a unique, private personal network that is unique to each user.    US 2001/0025253 Heintz et al teaches a multi-level award programme in which the internet activity of a enrolled user is tracked with award points being earned for various specified activities. Further bonus points can be accrued by the user from other “second, third, forth level” users and so on. Heintz does not teach any means of selective interaction within a group of entities known directly or indirectly to each other on a unique, private personal network.    WO 01/01307 teaches a viral-based marketing system for use over a computer network in which merchants of goods/services provide a commission to referral web sites according to the sales corresponding to the referred users. The system is not a unique, private, personal network suitable for selective interaction with the members who are all known, directly or indirectly to the user.    U.S. Pat. No. 6,327,572 Morton et al teaches methods for introducing potential customers to an information service having a voice-based interface and is specifically restricted to such audio systems. Therefore, the system does not provide for non-audio interaction of entities within a unique, private, personal network, nor for non-commercial activities.    WO 01/37232 teaches an internet-based match-making service between two people who already know each other, of each other, or met each other at a previous situation that can be described in sufficient detail to facilitate a match. This system does not relate to individuals who have not met though share a common link through an intermediary individual.
Other prior art systems include a great diversity of websites, networks and systems which enable users to interconnect with other users. However, none of the prior art provides a unique, private, personal network for use with a membership which is specifically tailored and personalised to the user and whose details cannot be discerned for an external source outside the network and/or without specific permission from the user.
All references, including any patents or patent applications cited in this specification are hereby incorporated by reference. No admission is made that any reference constitutes relevant prior art. The discussion of the references states what their authors assert, and the applicants reserve the right to challenge the accuracy and pertinency of the cited documents. It will be clearly understood that, although a number of prior art publications are referred to herein, this reference does not constitute an admission that any of these documents form part of the common general knowledge in the art, in New Zealand or in any other country.
It is acknowledged that the term ‘comprise’ may, under varying jurisdictions, be attributed with either an exclusive or an inclusive meaning. For the purpose of this specification, and unless otherwise noted, the term ‘comprise’ shall have an inclusive meaning—i.e. that it will be taken to mean an inclusion of not only the listed components it directly references, but also other non-specified components or elements. This rationale will also be used when the term ‘comprised’ or ‘comprising’ is used in relation to one or more steps in a method or process.
It is an object of the present invention to address the foregoing problems or at least to provide the public with a useful choice.
Further aspects and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the ensuing description which is given by way of example only.